The effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch listeners with and without aphasia

Abstract

Background: Research on language comprehension in aphasia has primarily focused on comprehension of isolated words and sentences. Even though previous studies have provided insights into comprehension abilities of individuals with aphasia at the word and grammatical level, our understanding of the nature and extent of their language comprehension (dis)abilities is not yet complete. In contrast to the highly restricted semantic and syntactic interpretation of sentences, discourse comprehension requires additional pragmatic and non-linguistic skills. Aims: The purpose of this study was to assess language comprehension in individuals with and without aphasia at the discourse level. In particular, it addressed the question of whether the use of direct speech, compared to indirect speech, affects comprehension of narrative discourse in Dutch aphasic and non-brain-damaged (NBD) listeners. Methods & Procedures:The Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed to examine the effects of manipulating direct vs. indirect speech on discourse comprehension. Twenty-three individuals with aphasia and 20 NBD participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech reports. The narratives were presented audio-visually on an iPad, and comprehension was assessed with yes/no questions. Outcomes & Results: The performance of the participants with aphasia was significantly poorer than that of the NBD participants. Moreover, a main effect for condition type was found, indicating that narratives with direct speech reports were better understood than narratives with indirect speech reports by listeners with and without aphasia. There

Post-editing Effort of a Novel With Statistical and Neural Machine Translation

“…The evidence ratio can be calculated on the basis of the AIC difference 11 and represents the relative probability that the model with the lowest AIC is more likely to provide a more precise model of the data. By using a threshold of 2 (see also Groenewold et al, 2014), we only select a more complex model if it is 2.7 times more likely than the simpler model. After including the fixed effect predictors separately, we evaluate (using AIC comparisons) if interactions between the fixed-effect predictors are necessary.…”

The differential effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch and English listeners with and without aphasia

“…A second candidate explanation proposed for the differences found in Groenewold, Bastiaanse, Nickels, Wieling, et al (2014) is related to the grammatical differences between direct and indirect speech constructions. Some of these differences exist only in Dutch, others exist in both Dutch and English.…”

“…One of the candidate explanations was related to the increase in liveliness for direct speech compared to indirect speech (Groenewold, Bastiaanse, Nickels, Wieling, et al, 2014). Liveliness of speech is mainly associated with enthusiasm (Sinclair, 1995).…”

“…This is a follow-up to a study in Dutch (Groenewold, Bastiaanse, Nickels, Wieling, & Huiskes, 2014) to examine whether the effects of direct and indirect speech constructions on discourse comprehension are the same or different for the two languages. Groenewold, Bastiaanse, Nickels, Wieling, et al (2014) showed that, for Dutch individuals with and without aphasia, narratives containing direct speech constructions were better comprehended than narratives with indirect speech constructions. Two possible explanations were put forward to account for these findings.…”

“…Second, in Dutch, clauses representing direct speech and clauses representing indirect speech have different word orders: While in direct speech the word order is subject-verb-object (SVO), in indirect speech it is subject-object-verb (SOV) (Groenewold, Bastiaanse, & Huiskes, 2013). Which word order is basic is highly debated (Groenewold, Bastiaanse, Nickels, Wieling, et al, 2014): For many years the general consensus was that Dutch is an SOV language (e.g., Bastiaanse, 2011;Bastiaanse, Hugen, Kos, & van Zonneveld, 2002;Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 2006;Koster, 1975;Scaglione, 1981); however, more recent theories propose that the SOV order is actually derived from a more basic SVO order (see Zwart, 2011, for an overview of the discussion). In English, there is no difference in word order between direct and indirect speech constructions (both are SVO).…”